Hi Bill, I have an app that could translate to family and individuals. In that case the bill is generated to the family record, but the individuals are only represented as line items and are not referred to by their ID# other than as text in the transaction description. So, as they move around the billing history stays with the family.
If, on the other hand, when you look back you are wanting to extract a history for an individual that won't work elegantly. To do that, the bill would be issued to the family record (in the header of the invoice) with individual IDs included in the transaction detail table. Each individual record would have both their individual id which would never change, and a family ID that could and links to a family table. You could then reference old bills and all the line items would remain, and query all transactions for a particular individual ID regardless of how many families they have belonged to in the past. Ben On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 4:44 PM, William Stacy <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm restructuring my billing system to become more flexible and correct and > would appreciate any suggestions/pointers from those more skilled than I. > My restructure is mostly due to two things. One, I've always billed by > family accounts, where one family member is assigned as the account holder. > The problem arises now and then that a family member leaves the nest and > either then has their own account, or joins another family which has its own > account. > > The problem is with the old transactions of prior family members not showing > up in account lookbacks. > > I know one popular way is to have everyone have their own accounts and just > split family payments into their individual parts. It's not pretty, and > requires more computing and more complex statements, but it would solve the > problem. > > I've also been toying with handling it at the transaction line item level, > assigning a permanent bill-to person/entity at that level which can also be > used to handle 3rd party issues. Which is the other part of this > restructure. > > TIA > > Bill > > > > -- > William Stacy, O.D. > > Please visit my website by clicking on : > > http://www.folsomeye.net > > >
